Flora’s Orff Music class wraps up for the year today, so I’ve got music on my mind. Now, Flora loves music. She always has, even though her mama and papa—not really. Although her mama remembers just about all the Beatles, Rolling Stone and Dylan lyrics that were her “Raffi” when she was the babe of flower children. I weaned Flora by singing her Yellow Submarine at night. After she committed Yellow Submarine to memory, she focused on Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, She Loves You, and It’s been a Hard Day’s Night.

At three and a half, she became fixated on Get Back. How fixated? A vignette: she’s playing with her dollhouse, and just as her daddy wanders out to see what she’s doing, one doll is saying to the other, “Get back home, Loretta! Your mama’s waiting for you. In her high heeled shoes and her low cut sweater… Get back home, Loretta!”

Later, a dinosaur named Sweet Loretta Martin tells a dinosaur named Jo-Jo that he isn’t really a loner, and they should go to the park together because it was full of California grass.

She’s seven now, and it’s been a long time since she’s grooved on the Beatles. They were replaced by Johnny Cash for a long while. Then (really) Weird Al—specifically The Saga Begins although Flora always called it That Anakin Guy and preferred the Lego version. And now—Minecraft video parodies (this is her favourite one). But when she’s out of sorts, and she can’t sleep, I can still usually soothe her with Yellow Submarine… and Ender’s now playing with a dinosaur that still goes by the name Jo-Jo.

Sweet Loretta Martin, I’m sad to report, has been eaten by a voracious Boston Terrier.

Get Back vignette from Life’s Archives UC, August 26, 2008